Water Rights: By Christine McFarlane

Water is a basic human right. All people deserve the right to a clean and accessible water source. However throughout the world people are struggling for this basic right, especially First Nations peoples. Changes to the land and to our environment have changed our landscape dramatically and my paper will be on how water as a basic right for Canadians takes on a whole different meaning for First Nations people and their communities.

Water is sacred, when you look at it from a First Nations perspective. It is a critical element to life. Every living being relies on water for life-insects, fish, birds, wildlife and plant life and we in return rely on them for our survival. According to Elder Violet Poitras from Paul First Nations, Alberta “ Many people take water for granted. Yet water serves our every basic need. We drink water to quench our thirst. We need water to grow and cook our food. When we are sick with a fever we are soothed by water. We cleanse our selves and our homes with water,” (Duncan; Bowden) and “when we pray we offer water as an offering. Water is needed for our ceremonial sweats.”(Duncan; Bowden)

The sacredness of water according to Dr. Deborah McGregor is “recognizing the vital importance of water to survival. Water is the blood of Mother Earth. Similar to blood, which circulates throughout our bodies, nutrients flow into the land via water. Without our blood serving its proper functions, we would die. It is the same with water. If it cannot perform its functions, we, as part of the Earth, will perish.”(McGregor)

It is with the above quote in mind that as a First Nations woman, I find myself asking “what would I do if I did not have safe drinking water?” and “what will it take for the rest of society to respect our waters, so that all Canadian citizens, especially First Nations peoples and their communities have safe viable drinking water?” 

According to the document “INDIGENOUS PEOPLES KYOTO WATER DECLARATION: Third World Water Forum, Kyoto, Japan in March 2003,” it is stated that Indigenous peoples now see “the ecosystems of the world have been compounding in change and in crisis”(Indigenous Environmental Network) and that “ in our generation we see that our waters are being polluted with chemicals, pesticides, sewage, disease, radioactive contamination and ocean dumping from mining to shipping wastes.” (Indigenous Environmental Network) Furthermore we see “our waters being depleted or converted into destructive uses through the diversion and damming of water systems, mining and mineral extraction, mining of groundwater and aquifer for industrial and commercial purposes, and unsustainable economic resource and recreational development, as well as the transformation of excessive amounts of water into energy.” (1ndigenous Environmental Network)

Within the western paradigm, I have noticed that society communicates the values of consumption, individualism and economic gain, and it is through these values that water is not respected and First Nations peoples have to fight to keep the sacredness alive in the waters that surround their territories. It is clear that water has become a commodity in our society of today. It has become, something that can be bought, sold and traded in the European-Canadian economic, legal and colonial system. Our water systems are now rife with exploitation, mostly on the part of our government systems, and huge corporations.

Within my research on water, I have noted there are at least 97 First Nations communities that face the reality of not having safe drinking water on a regular basis, and these statistics are staggering to say the least. Another important issue to note are the gaps in laws that would ensure safe aboriginal drinking water, because it is through these gaps that there is a continued risk of unsafe water for First Nations communities. These gaps have yet to be remedied, though the federal government announced public consultations for a new regulatory framework that would have taken place in the spring of 2009.

 It was in 1995 that Health Canada and the federal department of Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC) reported that an estimated one quarter of First Nations community water systems posed potential health and safety risks and eight years later in 2003, authors Linda F. Duncan and Marie Ann Bowden note that INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs of Canada) identified a continued significant risk to the quality or safety of drinking water in three out of four First Nations drinking systems” based on the federal “Guidelines for Canadian Drinking Water Quality.”  They further argued that “thirty percent of the communities were deemed high risk,” (Duncan; Bowden) and “Costs to remedy the situation were at that time at close to a billion dollars by INAC,” and based on visual inspections only.

The fair treatment of First Nations peoples according to Merrell-Ann S. Phare, author of “Denying the Source: The Crisis of First Nations Water Rights,” has never been consistently high on the priority list of governments in Canada; in numerous cases, such as fulfillment of treaty requirements, some governments have been outright obstruction-ist” (Phare)

This statement is further backed up in the article “Anishnaabekwe, Traditional Knowledge and Water” written by Dr. Deborah McGregor in the book “First Voices: an aboriginal women’s reader,” where she notes that “The voice of Aboriginal people remains largely absent in the discourse around water protection in Ontario.” (McGregor)

 According to the book “A Legal Guide to Aboriginal Drinking Water: A Prairie Province Perspective,” the authors state that the law for safe drinking water in Canadian First Nations communities has been succinctly described by the federal Commissioner for Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) as not being the same for “people who live off reserves”(Duncan; Bowden) and this is partly because “there is a vacuum of laws and regulations governing the provision of drinking water in First Nations communities, unlike other communities,”(Duncan; Bowden) and though “INAC (Indian and Northern Affairs of Canada) and Health Canada attempt to ensure safe access to safe drinking water in First Nations communities through their policies, administrative guidelines and funding arrangements,” (Duncan; Bowden) this approach does not cover “all the elements that would be found in a regulatory regime for drinking water, and it is not implemented consistently.” (Duncan; Bowden)

            There are many First Nations communities that can be cited for their difficulties with unsafe water but I will briefly mention three communities Kashechewan First Nation reserve in Northern Ontario, Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island), and Georgina Island, a community that I have visited on Lake Simcoe.

 Kashechewan made headlines in October 2005 when after living under a boil advisory for two years were ordered to leave their community when their drinking water tested positive for elevated levels of E.Coli. According to further reports by CBC about Kashechewan, there were “ two major evacuations in 2005 as a result of floods,” and Alan Pope, a special adviser to the federal Indian affairs minister recommended in November 2006 that the community be relocated to the outskirts of Timmins. The report that was released suggested a number of other options other than evacuation that included “moving the reserve to higher ground about 30 kilometres away or keeping the reserve in the same place.” (CBC News)

A new water treatment plant was also built in 1995 to replace the old one that had deteriorated beyond repair, however some residents of the reserve say ‘the new plant was built too small and could not handle the expansion that the community underwent.’ The intake pipe for the new treatment plant was placed downstream from the community’s sewage lagoon, and tides from James Bay pushed the dirty water back and forth across the intake. With this happening, there was a worsening of common skin problems, such as scabies and impetigo, and a “quarters of the community’s residents were airlifted to the Northern Ontario communities of Timmins, Sudbury and Cochrane. Another 250 were flown to Ottawa. The evacuation is estimated to have cost $16 million dollars” (CBC News)

Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island), as cited in McGregor’s article “Anishnaabekwe, Traditional Knowledge and Water” states that “residents began protesting what was happening to the water by responding to Imperial Chemical Industries’ indication that they wanted to dump more pollution into the waters flowing around Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island),”and that “Indigenous women in the Bkejwanong territory (Walpole Island) had noticed changes in water quality,” and in particular “birth defects and other changes in animals like the meat of the snapping turtle began to turn yellow.” (McGregor) And lastly I will mention Georgina Island.

 Georgina Island is surrounded by fresh water. According to Cynthia Wesley Esquimaux, an anthropology and social work professor from the University of Toronto, a very active advocate for water rights for First Nations people and a member of the Lake Simcoe Science Advisory Committee that was established in 2008  “People cannot drink the water and children get sick when they swim in the water especially in mid summer.” 

Wesley-Esquimaux goes on to relay that the “ biggest threats to Lake Simcoe are human activity, invasive species such as zebra mussels and other invaders that were introduced by fishermen as live bait and high levels of phosphorus,” and that “too much phosphorus causes an imbalance of life in the lake.” (Anishinabek News)

Government knowledge of the magnitude of the risk to First Nations drinking water and the lack of laws is not recent or anything new to First Nations peoples and their communities. According to Merrell-Ann S. Phare, author of “ Denying the Source: The Crisis of First Nations Water Rights,” it is important to “gain an understanding of Indigenous people’s water rights,” and it requires “knowledge of the choices Europeans made (and Canadian governments continue to make) to minimize the important place of Indigenous peoples in Canada.” (Phare)

In conclusion, we need to address the issue that “all Indigenous rights have, at their foundation, a connection to lands and waters, and that they all rely upon intact, functioning ecosystems,” and this issue could begin to change if “we adjust our vision and view of water in our lives”(Wesley-Esquimaux) because “it is time to see water through a sacred lens, Aboriginal people have been waiting. (Wesley-Esquimaux)

Works Cited

Aboriginal Canadians:Kashechewan: Water Crisis in Northern Ontario. CBC News. http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/aboriginals/kashechewan.html, 2005. Retrieved November 29, 2010

Duncan F. Linda; Bowden Marie Ann. A Legal Guide to Aboriginal Drinking Water: A Prairie Province Perspective. pg. iii-2. Alberta Law Foundation. 2009

Indigenous Environmental Network: Third World Water Forum, Kyoto, Japan. pg. 1 March 2003. Retrieved November 20, 2010. http://www.ienearth.org/docs/WWFIPKyotoWaterDeclarationFINAL.html

McFarlane. Christine. “Georgina prof on Simcoe committee.” Anishinabek News. pg.3 September 2008. Retrieved November 26, 2010

McGregor Deborah. Anishnaabekwe, Traditional Knowledge and Water. pg. 134-139 FIRST VOICES: an aboriginal women’s reader. INANNA Publications and Education Inc. Toronto, Canada. 2009

Phare. S. Merrell-Ann. Denying the Source: The Crisis of First Nations Water Rights. pg. 16 Rocky Mountain Books. Surrey, British Columbia. 2009.